Ian Thorpe and Leisel Jones are the early stars of our Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games campaign

NEVER mind the relay swimmers or Anna Meares or any of the Australians who’ve won our 15 medals on day one of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.

The real stars of the show so far have been Ian Thorpe and Leisel Jones, former superfish who are both doing a super job as TV presenters.

Both Thorpie and Leisel have been relaxed, chilled and wonderfully knowledgeable without being all geeky about it. In short, they’ve both been a revelation. Power to them. Onya, guys.

They’re chilled, we’re thrilled.Source:news.com.au

Younger swimmers can be weird fish, all gawky, gangly and let’s be honest, a little cringe-worthy to watch in interviews. You only had to catch the two nice-but-nerdy members of Australia’s world record-breaking 4x100m freestyle relay team interviewed on Ten this morning to see that.

Swimmers often stay gawky for years. But when they step out of the pool, older and wiser and free of the smell of chlorine, something magical happens. It’s like they finally exhale after 10 years of holding their breath.

Thorpe, of course, has had greater reason than most to exhale this past week. Relieved at last of the burden of a secret, the prominent fashion guru, athlete advocate and indigenous rights activist is displaying all of his wisdom and maturity on Channel Ten’s set.

Thorpe’s great. Just great. Like Shane Warne in cricket, he ignores all of the rules of TV, saying what he actually thinks rather than what some script, or faceless TV producer in his ear, reckons he should say.

Thorpe’s body language is all TV wrong. You’re supposed to look down the barrel of the camera and put your hands somewhere sensible. You’re supposed to sit up straight, not slouch.

Not Thorpie. He’s got one hand on his lap, the other across the top of the couch. He presents TV in exactly the same body position in which many of us watch it. For him, the couch is to be treated as exactly that. For your average wooden TV presenter, it might as well be a straight-backed chair.

As for Leisel, wow. She just looks and sounds terrific. Mature, relaxed, confident and insightful, the new intensely likable Leisel is a world away from the nervous wreck of a thing we too often saw in her competition days.

Jones, remember, revealed last year to Sydney journalist Jessica Halloran that her (successful) quest for Olympic gold had cost her mental health and wellbeing.

She said she was “psychotic”, that winning was “the be all and end all”, and that it came at a cost of relationships, family and social time. “I was a mess,” she said.

Thorpie and Leisel back in 2000 when they looked a lot geekier and Powerade had a weird symbol above the letter a.Source:News Corp Australia

That’s not to say that every young swimmer out there at these Games is embarking on a path as full of anguish, despair and sacrifice as Jones. It is merely to point out that here’s a woman who was tough to watch in interviews in her heyday, but who now presents as calm, assured and utterly fabulous.

Ten has done well to recruit these two. There are already people whingeing about the network’s Games coverage, but they should be ignored because a) all of us have different preferences at multi-sport events and b) the whingers probably don’t know how to work their digital TVs.

There are also some people whingeing about Thorpie and Leisel being not professional enough or something, but the problem with TV is that too many people are too slick and not real enough.

Ten gets this, and by employing Thorpie and Leisel they’ve set a great tone. And let’s be brutally honest here. Swimming is a fundamentally dull spectacle. People swimming up and down a pool is not exciting. But sport is about narrative, about storyline. Thorpie and Leisel have famous back stories themselves, and they’re helping us understand the new stories.

With these two on the couch, the Commonwealth Games swimming is the complete entertainment package. Good on you, guys. Keep up the good work.

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